Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,27

put in green and blue stripes.”

Nik laughed. “Sounds interesting.”

“I wanted everything about me to make a statement, you know? My body—the rebellion.” He brushed his hand down his chest and thought about his scars, about the things he’d changed, and the things he hadn’t. “But I’m not…brave. Not like a lot of people.”

Nik’s shoulders went straight, a line of tension rippling down his spine. “I don’t know you well enough to say for sure, but you seem brave to me.” His nose wrinkled a little, and his fingers danced in a little rhythm across the tops of his trousers, like he was feeling for dips and grooves in the fabric. “But is that what you want to be? Brave?”

Adam blinked, because no one had ever asked him that before. Hell, he’d never even asked himself. “I don’t think so.”

Nik’s smile widened. “What do you want?”

The words came before he was even really aware of them, and they burned his throat as they formed over lips and tongue. “Important. I…I want to be important.”

Nik’s mouth smiled, and his hands stilled. “Well, then. Adam.” His words were halting and painful with honesty. “I think in that respect, you’ve already reached your goal.”

Chapter 8

Da Capo

The inevitable headache began the Friday before the spring concerto, and Nik’s routine quickly added in pain medication every few hours. It also added in his irritability and the constant fights with his brother, who seemed to enjoy making his life more difficult when stress was getting the better of him.

Van never did quite understand why music was important to Nik—but then again, Van never made much of an attempt to understand him at all. He’d been a good brother growing up, just the right amount of helpful and pain in the ass so Nik didn’t grow up treated like he was helpless in spite of his mother’s lingering guilt. But there were days he wished Van had bothered to at least sympathize with how chaotic putting together a concert could be.

He was fielding texts from Bryce’s mother constantly, because the woman didn’t seem to understand that when he said he’d get back to her when he had time, that didn’t mean she needed to remind him five times a day. He understood her eagerness to get her son a coveted slot in his dwindling private time, but she was one more thing he didn’t want to worry about.

Mostly though, his irritation was higher because he was missing Adam. It had been a long damn time since he’d connected to a new person—a veritable stranger no less, but he craved him in ways he never expected to. He found himself wanting to know more, learn more, to crawl inside his brain and dig around and understand what made him the person he was.

It was obvious Adam was holding back a lot—he was an expert at deflecting personal questions, and the most Nik had managed to get out of him was that he was feeling a little bit of an outsider in their small town. It was hard not to. He understood that too well. Apart from the Army base up the road and the small community college, there wasn’t much. One elementary school, one middle, one high school—people either settled into the quiet nothing of being a town lifer, or they broke out and never looked back.

Nik thought he was the second one once—when he set foot in New York determined to make something of himself as a musician. The night he took the stage at Carnegie Hall, he thought that was it. There were press pieces written about him, reviewers singing his praises, waiting to see what would come next from this new, blossoming name in the classical world.

And then their mom died, and his dad got sick, and Van called. Nik returned on a trip that was meant to be only for a little while, but the town sank its claws into him all over again, and this time it didn’t let go. And maybe that was why being with Adam made him feel like he could breathe again, but deep down, he knew it wasn’t true.

It was more, it was…alien. Exciting. Thrilling and mysterious. It lit a fire in him he thought had gone out years ago when he resigned himself to being alone for the rest of his life.

“Out with your boyfriend again?” Van asked as Nik walked through the front door.

Nik grimaced as he propped his cane against the side of the doorframe and